I love travelling around the world.
Recently, I went to Verona and then Tel Aviv. From there, I joined a tour to Hungary, where I explored Budapest and ate goulash on the Danube. I continued on to Vienna, where I stood before paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens, and Da Vinci, and marvelled at the exquisite genius of Giuseppe Arcimboldo. I ate Sachertorte and beef sausages with sauerkraut, crossed the Charles Bridge in Prague, and prayed in the Maisel Synagogue, built in the 16th century.
I am called a “solo traveller,” but in truth, I am anything but solo. It’s true that I arrive at airports, train stations, and bus stops alone—but that’s usually where being alone ends. Every art gallery, café, restaurant, stoplight, or shop window holds the potential for a meeting with someone with whom a connection can be made.
And some meetings become transformational.
One day, I took a bus from my son’s street in Tel Aviv to a street called Shenkin. It was bus number 14, a little blue bus with 20 seats. The driver stopped at every stop, and after three or four, there were about 45 people squeezed inside. By this point, many of the passengers—mainly older women carrying plastic bags teeming with veg
etables from the open market
place, or bags full of books—were screaming at the driver not to open the doors, insisting there was no more room. But he didn’t listen.
A woman of about 35 was standing over me, her violin case leaning against my shoulder and knocking me on the forehead every time the driver braked. I asked if she was okay. She smiled and said she was fine. A little space opened up between the sardine-packed passengers, and an elderly woman wearing bright red lipstick and a black off-the-shoulder blouse smiled at me and began a conversation, in Hebrew.
“The bus driver is crazy.”
I nodded.
“Where are you going?”
I could barely hear her, but I did my best to respond.
Suddenly, as the bus slowed down, she stood up and pounced onto the seat next to me, just as the elderly man who had been sitting there was still trying to gather his belongings. The bus doors opened briefly, then began to close on his body, and the whole bus started to scream at the driver:
“WAIT! WAIT! Someone is trying to get off! OPEN THE DOOR! DRIVER! OPEN THE DOOR!”
And we were off again. This time, the glamorous woman began her interrogation:
“Where are you from?
Does your son live here?
Where is his fiancée from?
Oh! I’m from Argentina too.
What’s her name?
I think I know her.
What’s her father’s name?
I KNOW HIM!!!”
And so it went on.
“Guess how old I am?” she asked.
I guessed kindly.
“No! I’m 87. So guess where I’m going?”
And with that, she told me she was meeting her weekly group of friends, that today they would be eating cheesecake, and that she loved going into the city. Then she asked if I belonged to a group, too. She told me about her life, her late husband, and how she appreciates everything and that life is wonderful. I saw my bus stop approaching, but when I looked into her eyes, I knew I wasn’t getting off.
Eventually, she did get off the bus—delighted that we were disembarking at the same stop. She hugged me, and I hugged her back, and I watched her walk away with a little lilt in her step.
I had no idea where I was. And I didn’t care.
I knew I was happy—happier than I had been in a very long time. And that is a very good place to be.
